Modeling Sustainability of Water, Environment, Livelihood, and Culture in Traditional Irrigation Communities and Their Linked Watersheds

Abstract

Water scarcity, land use conversion and cultural and ecosystem changes threaten the way of life for traditional irrigation communities of the semi-arid southwestern United States. Traditions are strong, yet potential upheaval is great in these communities that rely on acequia irrigation systems. Acequias are ancient ditch systems brought from the Iberian Peninsula to the New World over 400 years ago; they are simultaneously gravity flow water delivery systems and shared water governance institutions. Acequias have survived periods of drought and external shocks from changing economics, demographics, and OPEN ACCESSSustainability 2012, 4 2999 resource uses. Now, climate change and urbanization threaten water availability, ecosystem functions, and the acequia communities themselves. Do past adaptive practices hold the key to future sustainability, or are new strategies required? To explore this issue we translated disciplinary understanding into a uniform format of causal loop diagrams to conceptualize the subsystems of the entire acequia-based human-natural system. Four subsystems are identified in this study: hydrology, ecosystem, land use/economics, and sociocultural. Important linkages between subsystems were revealed as well as variables indicating community cohesion (e.g., total irrigated land, intensity of upland grazing, mutualism). Ongoing work will test the conceptualizations with field data and modeling exercises to capture tipping points for non-sustainability and thresholds for sustainable water use and community longevity.

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“…The reason being that due to man-made changes including channelizing the river and construction of flood-control levees, the river no longer meanders, or floods into side channels or the floodplain as before, features that naturally meant more seepage of water into the floodplain, more aquifer recharge, and thus more late-season groundwater return flow. Long term drought would of course also affect aquifer recharge and stream flow patterns, not only as a direct result of less precipitation, but also because of the likely socioeconomic and policy changes that would result and would affect water management and distribution (Fernald et al, 2012).…”

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